National News

NSA grabs 'millions of images per day' online

(NEWSER) – Move over, metadata and voice-call collection: The NSA is also harvesting images and trying to identify them with facial-recognition software, the New York Times reports. According to 2011 agency documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the NSA grabs "millions of images per day"—about 55,000 of which are good enough for facial recognition. The agency doesn't take them from state databases of US passport photos or driver's licenses, said an NSA spokeswoman, but she wouldn't say whether social media sites or State Department databases were fair game.